Abb

Curious spectators crowded into a courtroom at Melun, last week, as two men and ten women, all members of the Sadistic Bordeaux cult of Notre Dame des Pleurs (Our Lady of Tears) were arraigned on a charge of having stripped and flogged the Abbe des Noyers at Bombon (TIME, Jan. 18).

The Abbe appeared in court, although still suffering from the strokes which had been administered to him with knotted rope ends by his Bordeaux assailants. One by one they were called to the stand and stoutly continued to maintain that they had flogged the Abbe "because he has menaced the life of our Sainted Mother Marie," i. e., Marie Mesmin, a former Bordeaux concierge, who has headed the cult of Notre Dame des Pleurs for 21 years, and presided at most of its Sadistic rites.

Pointing to the Abbe, defendant Maurice Lourdin cried: "There sits the Devil, Satan himself! . . . He is the greatest sorcerer of the age. He can make people die, with or without pain, as he desires. . . . He sent upon us awful maladies. I suffer from them. . . . Our Sainted Mother suffers. . . ."

The judge desired to know exactly how these diseases were sent, and what they were like.

Defendant Lourdin explained: "When migrating birds passed over the Abbe, at Bombon, flying in the direction of Bordeaux, he filled them with diseases by sorcery. . . . When the birds passed over our homes at Bordeaux (500 miles away) they caused to grow poisonous mushrooms of lascivious shape and noxious odor, which gave us shameful diseases in various forms." The Abbe des Noyers boomed: "That is a frightful lie!" The other male defendant, one Henri Froger, was called: "The Abbe afflicted me likewise with shameful diseases. . . . We did not mean to kill him but only to defend our Sainted Mother Marie, whose statue of the Blessed Virgin now weeps* night and day. . . . We await such punishment as may be meted out to us as martyrs. We have only done our duty." Mme. Robert, who had declared earlier that she was the last to flog the Abbe des Noyers before he swooned, opened her testimony with a prayer. Said she: "We were often bounced about in our beds by this wicked man working his sorcery." "She lies!" cried the Abbe des Noyers. Later, the 17-year-old daughter of Mme. Robert, described as "an extraordinarily pretty girl," deposed that she had helped to chastise the Abbe "only because my mother and the rest did. I did not hit him hard. . . . He has never made me suffer. However, I know that he has made my mother and our Sainted Mother Marie suffer." The hearing continued.

* Despatches reported that its tears have been analyzed by a chemist and found to be identical with the city water of Bordeaux.